In a rare move, Ramna police Thursday arrested a top CID police official from the home ministry allegedly for attempting to bribe State Minister for Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babar.
MA Baten, a special superintendent of police of the Criminal Investigation Department, was arrested from inside the office of the state minister after Baten allegedly tried to offer Tk 300,000 as bribe for cancelling his transfer order, home ministry sources said.
SSP Baten was the supervising officer of the murder case of Awami League lawmaker Ahsanullah Master, who was shot dead at a political rally in his home town of Tongi on May 7.
According to the police, an order was issued on Tuesday transferring Baten to Khagrachhari as SP. But he wanted the minister to cancel the order while meeting him at his secretariat office at around 3:30pm.
After his arrest, Baten dismissed the allegation and told New Age, “It’s a conspiracy.”
According to the police, Baten “offered Tk 3 lakh to the state minister and promised to give the same per month if he is not transferred from Dhaka.”
Immediately, Babar called his private secretary as well as the home secretary and the inspector general of police to his office. Later he handed Baten over to the police along with a packet, containing six bundles of Tk 500 notes.
Baten was taken to Ramna police station at around 7:00pm and was confined in the lockup.
Sources in the home ministry said SSP Baten exchanged “hot words” with Babar against his transfer to Khagrachari arguing that he was due to go on leave preparatory to retirement in about 18 months time.
Baten served as additional deputy commissioner of police (south) in the DMP prior to his promotion as SP two years ago. He was later posted in the CID as an SSP.
After the CID was charged with investigating the Ahsanullah Master murder case, Baten was made the supervising officer.
It is learnt that during investigation, the CID team under his supervision implicated several local BNP leaders, including its youth front leader Nurul Islam Sarker, in the murder case.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the CID team raided Tongi homes of Sarker and several other ruling party leaders. They included younger brother of BNP leader Hasanuddin Sarker and two others — Mohammad Ali and Pappu. :-/

-Newage

[Edited on 3-6-2004 by reverse_swing]

reverse_swing

June 3, 2004, 04:13 PM

The government on Thursday ‘dismissed’ the acting secretary to the Prime Minister’s Office, AHM Nurul Islam, following allegations of conspiracy to overthrow the BNP regime, confirmed PMO sources.
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia made a final decision in the afternoon to sent Nurul Islam into ‘forced’ retirement. The official order, signed by the president in the evening, was issued Thursday night.
Acting secretary of the education ministry Khandaker Shahidul Islam, serving on extension, has been made secretary-in charge of the PMO, the establishment ministry said.
Four additional secretaries serving in the post of acting secretary, who are said to have been close to Islam, will be made officers on special duty soon, and some others will be transferred gradually, hinted PMO sources.
Once a favourite of the PMO, Nurul Islam was implicated in the plot against the BNP government that he served with ‘authority and command’ until early April when the ruling camp started suspecting him.
PMO sources said that a primary investigation found ‘elements of doubt and signs of conspiracy’ in Islam’s activities, leading to a planned instability linked with the opposition Awami League’s April 30 deadline.
Sources elsewhere said Nurul Islam’s ‘fault’ lay in his official order asking five ministries to probe corruption charges against BNP’s joint secretary general-1 Tarique Rahman, that was given in an unnamed letter on April 20.
The decision to fire the PMO’s acting secretary, Nurul Islam, was taken after Prime Minister Khaleda Zia held a series of meetings with her key cabinet colleagues ––– Saifur Rahman, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, Dr Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, MK Anwar and M Shamsul Islam.
Fifteen BNP lawmakers met the prime minister on Tuesday night and demanded removal of Nurul Islam, the PMO’s secretary. The MPs demanded his punishment for “conspiring” against the BNP regime.
On Thursday afternoon, the prime minister called the establishment secretary, Safar Raj Hossain, and directed him to complete the official procedure for Islam’s retirement.
According to the retirement law in the civil service, the government can retire a civil servant on completion of his/her 25 years of service, and such a move is called “forced retirement” although it is officially termed “retirement in the public interest”.
Nurul Islam, as usual, went to the PMO in the morning and left office at about 3:00pm after he was conveyed his formal ‘dismissal’. His job was virtually suspended in the previous three days, sources there said.
A civil servant of the 1977 batch, Nurul Islam was a private secretary to the prime minister (with both deputy and joint secretaries’ ranks) before his promotion to additional secretary in August, 2003. Only 14 months before that, he had held the rank of deputy secretary.
Seventeen of the 20 acting secretaries are said to be close to Nurul Islam, who played the key role in giving promotion to 97 bureaucrats to the rank of additional secretaries. Also, the government delayed the process of the latest promotions due to his connection with it.
He issued an official order to investigate allegations, in an unnamed letter of about 2,000 words, against Tarique Rahman and others, involving multi-million dollar projects including DAP-1 and DAP-2, Baro Pukuria 250 MW power plant, 80 MW Tongi power plant, Pagla water treatment plant, North Dhaka (East) sewerage plant and two 210 MW power plants in Siddhirganj and Khulna.
However, the ‘fictitious’ letter was not properly received by the PMO nor was it recorded in the ledger book. Questions have arisen whether such a letter was at all received by the PMO or was the creation of the said official himself.
The sender of the letter, the signature showed, was a former chief engineer of Dhaka WASA, Abdur Rashid. But no Abdur Rashid was ever chief engineer of Dhaka WASA, said officials.
“There is no scope for inquiry into any allegation based on an unnamed letter, so how come the secretary moved an investigation?” asked an MP. Also, Nurul Islam did not take permission from the prime minister for investigation into allegations against a minister, which is an official requirement.
The police had cordoned off Nurul Islam’s house Thursday evening, but an arrest had not been made till the filing of this report at 10:30pm.

-Newage

Zunaid

June 3, 2004, 04:18 PM

Wow - one news item and it kind of touches on everything that is wrong in Bangladesh.

1. Bribery
2. Bribery - where did Baten so much money? Dumb question.
3. Bribery
4. Abuse of power - The transfer order was probably because the investigation riled some highher-ups
5. Political murders and gangsterism - the original murder
6. Other forms of corruption
7. Lack of tolerance
8. Lack of accountablity
9..

This is getting me depressed. BD better beat WI.

Navarene

June 9, 2004, 09:05 PM

CID super held for trying to bribe Babar

Yesterday I happened to meet one of my acquaintances who is the brother of a joint secretary of Bangladesh home ministry. This guy told me that his brother(the joint secretary) revealed the actual fact behind this bribery episode to him.

Mr. Baten is one of the very few honest and brave police officers in this putrescent corrupted bureaucratic system of Bangladesh. As was being appointed as the supervising officer of the murder case of Awami League MP Ahsanullah Master, he gathered perceptible evidence against some top BNP leaders who might have been connected to this murder. Given the fact that the evidence against all these top leaders would unveil their crime, Mr. Baten was promptly transfered to a remote place called Khagracchari.

Mr. Baten was shocked and surprised to know about his sudden transfer. The dumbest thing he did was meeting the state minister for home affair in person and protesting against his tranfer. Our honorable state minister had no other choice but to be a sycophant of this great dynesty of son-mother kingdom of Bangladesh and thus get this honest police officer into this false case of bribery.